This invention generally pertains to a novel composition and method for marking trails that utilizes a bio-degradable, fluorescing coating that is coated onto wooden stakes for use in marking or staking a path through woods, fields, or any land area where persons are likely to travel to and from a particular location.
Hunters, fisherman, and outdoor enthusiasts often seek to travel to places and spots in wilderness areas in order to take advantage of what these places offer. These places and areas can be remote, and typically are not easily accessed. More often than not, these remote areas can be accessed only by off-road vehicles, horseback, or foot. Consequently, most of these places and spots do not experience large crowds of people. Because these places and spots are not heavily accessed, often there are no roads, paths, or reliable markings indicating how to find the place or spot.
Due to the remote nature of these places and spots, often they make for ideal places from which to hunt, fish, observe wildlife, or other activity wherein isolation and quiet is desired. For example, when hunting, a hunter will typically seek out an isolated spot from which to hunt. This is desirable for several reasons. When most animals roam in the woods, they tend to avoid places where large groups of people can be found. Also, most wild animals avoid places where people tend to congregate. For example, deer often times will not approach a location if they smell that people are there or have recently been there. The deer prefer to remain deep within the woods. Remaining in the woods provides them with cover and is home to their food and water supply. As such, a deer hunter typically needs to traverse through woods or fields in order to find the deer that are deep within the woods. Moreover, since noise from human activity typically scares wild animals, including deer, it is advantageous to travel as deep into the wilderness and as far away from other human activity as possible.
In addition to hunters, others who are interested in encountering wildlife will seek out places and spots deep within a wooded area. For example, photographers who desire to photograph deer or other animals in their natural habitat need to venture deep into the woods in order to find the animals. Often times this will involve the person seeking out a path into the woods or simply heading into the woods in a random direction seeking out a spot from which they may observe wild animals.
This desire of hunters, sportsmen, and the like, to venture off the beaten path and deep into the woods, is not free from peril. There are and have always been stories of people who have wandered into the woods or other wilderness areas and become lost. Depending on the circumstances and area in which a person becomes lost, becoming lost in the woods can result in serious injury or death. Therefore, it can be dangerous for one to wander into the woods without knowledge of the woods and of where they are going. Sometimes, even if a person is familiar with the areas in which they are going, problems can still arise. For example, it is very possible to become stranded by changing weather conditions. Rapidly moving thunderstorms, flash floods, snowstorms, and even perhaps fog can change a familiar landscape into unfamiliar terrain.
Thus, the innate dangers of entering the woods, wilderness, or other remote areas have given rise to a need for products, devices, and methods to prevent people from becoming lost. A need exits for a people to be able to find their way out of the wilderness once they have ventured within. Moreover, once a person has visited a particular spot, he or she may wish to return to that specific spot. Thus a need exists for products, devices, and methods for a person to be able to retrace their steps and return to a favorite spot.
In addition to the desire of hunters, sportsmen, and the like to enjoy the outdoors through activities like hunting, fishing, and hiking, many people are realizing the health benefits of hiking and are beginning to hike in the woods and wilderness areas. Recently, people are becoming more aware of the potential detrimental effect on the environment of large numbers of people frequenting a particular area. Many people are becoming more aware of and concerned with minimizing their impact on the environment. When multiple people walk through the woods in the same spot, pathways develop. Since pathways are typically where vegetation is worn away and cannot grow, largely due to people or animal traffic, creation of a path has a detrimental impact on the environment; it stops growth where normally growth would occur. Thus, creation of a path to a particular spot in the wilderness is undesirable. However, a path is generally the way a person finds his or her way back to a particular spot. Without a path it can be difficult to remember how to get to the desired spot. As such a need exists for a device and method by which a person can find their way to and from a spot in a wilderness area that has a minimal effect on the environment.
Many products and devices now exist that aid persons in their ventures within remote woods, wilderness areas, and other locations. The most obvious example, and one of the simplest, is a compass. A compass, in its simplest form, is designed to always point toward magnetic North (in the northern hemisphere) such that a person need only look at the needle to determine in which direction North lies. Armed with this information, if a person is familiar with the area or has a map, they can usually find their way to a location using the cardinal directions (North, South, East, and West). However, this provides only information on the general direction a person is traveling and does not provide guidance on a person's actual location. The ability to find a particular spot using only a compass and a map takes appreciable skill. Indeed, the sport of orienteering has developed for people to compete in their ability to locate a particular spot using only a map and compass.
Over the years the technology and design of a compass has greatly improved. Currently, a person is able to purchase a global positioning system (GPS) that uses satellites to pinpoint a person's location on the surface of the earth to within approximately 10 feet. While this is amazingly accurate information, there are still problems that need to be overcome that a GPS simply cannot defeat. First, a GPS must be powered. Therefore, one must use batteries, solar charges, or another power source to power the GPS unit. Also, a GPS is only good and will only work when the satellites are accessible. If the reception of the GPS is not good, due to potential cover such as clouds or very dense tree cover, reception may be lost and the functionality of the GPS unit reduced to zero. If a person is relying only on a GPS to guide them, and the GPS becomes inoperable for any reason, the person is left with a useless device.
Moreover, a GPS unit can be bulky and unwieldy to carry. This is compounded by the fact that most people, when traveling in the woods or any wilderness or less traveled area, will have certain gear they are bringing with them. For example, hunters will typically have a firearm or bow, and photographers will typically have a camera, lenses, and film. While advances in materials have reduced the size and weight of guns, bows, cameras, etc., the fact remains that a person still has to carry the items into the wilderness area with them. Use of a backpack helps with some of this, but backpacks can be unwieldy. Typically a hunter or photographer strives to maintain flexibility and a certain freedom of movement in order to reduce any noise they may make that would scare away wildlife. Thus, while a GPS unit is quite handy and a useful device, it is still yet another item that the person traveling into the woods must deal with. As such, GPS units, while useful, still have a myriad of problems that need to be overcome.
Perhaps one of the best solutions to the problem of marking a trail or path into a wilderness area comes in the form of a simple roll of tape. There are numerous products on the market that are essentially trail marking tape. A person will go into the woods and periodically tear off a piece of tape and place it on a tree or rock in a visible location. Thus, when the person is entering or leaving the area, he or she simply needs to follow the bread-crumb trail of tape.
Trail marking tape has undergone advances much like the compass. Currently, tape is available that is manufactured so as to have reflective properties, much like reflectors placed on bicycles, cars, boats, etc. This reflective property of the tape allows the person searching for the tape to easily spot the tape in the woods even in lower light conditions. There are even phosphorescent paints that can coat the tape such that it will glow for a time after the sun sets. The use of tape is, however, fraught with problems that need to be overcome.
Tape can be harmful to the environment in which it is placed. Often tape is coated with an adhesive that contains chemicals that are harmful to the environment. Tape is manufactured to be strong and therefore can last for years. While this may be advantageous in that one would desire the tape to last, the overall impact on the environment is negative. Since many people enjoy the woods and remote places for the natural beauty, lots of tape showing up on trees and rocks is undesirable.
Another method people have devised to mark trails in and out of secluded areas is simply to place thumbtacks into trees along the way. Like tape, however, the use of thumbtacks can be problematic. Most thumbtacks are metal and, therefore, can rust. Also, thumbtacks tend to be small and difficult to see, especially in lower light conditions. Further, the use of multiple thumbtacks in the wilderness can detract from the esthetic appeal much like the over use of tape. Thus, a need exists to overcome the limitations of thumbtacks as well.
An additional problem with the use of tape, thumbtacks, or any readily visible marker is that anyone can see it. Hunting and fishing have become competitive in recent years due in large part to the increase in the numbers of people enjoying these activities. As such, the competition for the best spots is sometimes fierce. If a person finds a favorite spot and wants to mark a trial to the spot so that they can find it again, the use of tape, thumbtacks or any visible marker will alert other people to their find. This can be especially important for hunters, where there is always a risk of stray bullets.
While most areas used in hunting are remote and not heavily accessed, there are places where a large number of hunters typically gather. For example, state game lands attract a large number of hunters. Thus, hunters who find a favorite spot in which to hunt, or even set up a hunting blind or stand, need a way to find their spot or blind that other hunters are not likely to follow. This is especially true in peak hunting times such as the first few days of the season or “doe” days in which many hunters are in the woods. However, typical prior art methods of marking trails allow anyone who is in the vicinity of the marked trail to easily see and potentially follow the marked path. Thus, a need exists for a device and method of marking a trail that is easy for the person who finds the spot to use, yet is not easily apparent to one who is not familiar with the trail.
Several US patents have issued that relate the present invention. However, none of these patents discloses the beneficial and novel aspects of the present invention. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,000,111 to Gibson discloses and teaches a trail marking device for marking a trail and guiding an individual who is retracing his steps in a wooded area during daylight or darkness. The device taught by Gibson has a long sheet of light reflecting material that is easily seen in the daylight. Abutting the long sheet is a strip of luminescent material which can be more easily viewed in darkness. Gibson discloses several longitudinally spaced, longitudinally aligned wire sections that are sandwiched between the strips for securing individual sheet sections to a tree limb. The sheet sections are detachably coupled to adjacent sheet sections along perforated break lines. Gibson also teaches that the strips are wound on a spool which includes a plurality of tacks which can be used for alternately tacking the strips to a tree. This system requires that the marker remain visible to anyone who happens to be looking toward it. Also, this system requires attachment to a tree. As such, the impact on the environment is significant. Not only is there a detrimental effect of placing these markers on trees, but there remains unsightly markers that are easily seen by others when in the wilderness.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,669,327 to Beebe discloses and teaches a system for marking trails that includes a visible tag. The visible tag has a unitary body of a planar configuration. The tag is made to have a highly visible color with the body of the tag being made of a biodegradable plastic material. Beebe teaches that to use the system, several tags are fastened to foliage at regular intervals along a trail to provide a series of visible markers which define the trail. Beebe teaches that the tags are retrieved for reuse after the tags have served their intended purpose. A problem inherent to the system disclosed by Beebe is that the markers remain highly visible to anyone who is walking nearby in the wilderness. Indeed, the tags taught by Beebe are designed to be highly visible in the wilderness. Further, the tags are designed to be attached to vegetation along the desired route. Thus, there is an impact on the surrounding environment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,299,379 to Lewis discloses and teaches a reflective trail marker which may be used to form an outdoor trail. The marker is designed to be highly visible at night. Lewis teaches that the reflective trail marker has a generally “hour-glass” shaped marker head. On the marker head is a central portion and top and bottom cap portions. The central portion has a light reflective side wall surface. The top and bottom cap portions have non-reflective surfaces, and preferably overhang the reflective side wall surface of the central portion. Lewis discloses that the reflective trail markers may be attached to horizontal support structures, for 360° reflection. Lewis teaches that this is in order to mark a trail easily visible at night when a light is shined on the trail from any angle. Also, Lewis teaches that the trail marker may be attached to vertical support structures, for limited angle reflection, to form a secret trail. Lewis states that the marker can be placed vertically such that the top and bottom shade a portion of the reflective surface. In order to detect the marker, the light must be shown onto the marker at a particular angle in order to contact the reflective material. Lewis claims that the trail is secret because one must know to shine the light at a particular angle in order to detect the trail. Lewis also discloses a metal pin that extends from the bottom cap portion to allow easy attachment and removal of the marker from a tree or other support structure. A problem with the disclosure of Lewis is that a person who is shining light from varying angles will be able to detect the markers if they shine the light at varying angles. Also, if one person is shorter or taller than the person who placed the markers, the light would be able to detect the trail markers. In addition, the trail markers are designed to be removed from the trail.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,301,469 to Hoffman et al. (“Hoffman”) discloses and teaches an electronic trail marking system operated by a remote control. The system has multiple trail markers and a remote control handset. The handset controls and can activate the trail markers. The invention also includes a setting tool for setting and removing the trail markers. To use the trail marking system, a hunter attaches a trail marker into a tree using the setting tool. The trail markers contain externally perceivable indicators that can be selectively turned on an off with the remote control. When the indicators in the trail markers are off, the trail markers are inconspicuous. However, when the indicators are activated, they are highly visible. As such, a hunter can selectively turn on and off the trail markers as he/she walks along the trail. Several problems exist with this invention however. The trail markers require attachment to the foliage. Additionally, the user must carry a remote control to activate the markers. Additionally, the markers must have a source of power which is typically a battery. The battery will require replacing when the charge has been consumed.
A need therefore exists for a device and method that overcomes the limitations of the prior art, yet meets the demands of the modern hunter and outdoor enthusiast. Moreover, a need exists for a trail marking device that is not harmful to the environment and that can be difficult to see or hidden from other people. The present invention solves the problems of the prior art and provides such a device and method.